This blog is intended to document David Giltinan's ongoing struggle with the peculiar charms of the Spanish language, which began in March 2007 in Spain and continues in 2009 in Madrid, Santiago, Buenos Aires, and (hopefully) Madrid again.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

¿ Wanna bet ?

Spaniards like to gamble:

It could be bingo.

A night out at the casino.

Taking part in the state lottery, in particular, the huge Christmas draw, in which every family in Spain participates. Tickets for this lottery, the biggest of the year (affectionately known as "el gordo", or "the fat one") are a common Christmas gift. Numbers are chosen by photogenically angelic orphans from the St Ildefonso orphanage in Madrid, in a nationally televised ceremony a few days before Christmas. Then there's also the regular ONCE lottery, run by the organisation for the blind.

One of the many "Salon de Juegos" in downtown Madrid, home to a seizure-inducing array of one-armed bandits and assorted other slot machines.

I don't have statistics to back this up, but it's hard to avoid the conclusion that gambling is one of the more popular Spanish pursuits.

About Me

is the pseudonym of David Giltinan, a native Irishman (from County Cork) who moved to the U.S. in 1979 to attend graduate school in Chapel Hill, worked as a statistician in the biopharmaceutical industry until January 2007, and is co-author (with Marie Davidian) of a book: Nonlinear Models for Repeated Measurement Data.